Today, gas grills are very popular for outdoor cooking. They are convenient, clean and safe. They generally consist of a support frame or cart, a firebox or cooking chamber with a cover, one or more gas burners, lava rocks or sear bars, and a cooking grid. Numerous models exist in all types of styles, sizes and shapes. Some are pre-assembled and others must be assembled by the consumer or owner. The assembling of a portable grill can range from relatively easy and tool-free to extremely difficult and labor and tool intensive.
Two very popular product lines on the market are the GENESIS.RTM. Series Gas Barbecues and the SPIRIT.TM. Series Gas Barbecues, both made by WEBER-STEPHEN PRODUCTS CO., Palatine, Ill. These products have met with great success in the market. Even though these high quality grills have introduced many innovative features, they have maintained their ease of assembly. Such innovative and patented features include, among others: numerous design breakthroughs (U.S. Pat. Nos. DES 293,067 and DES 316,355); burner tube assemblies (U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,964); scale mechanisms for indicating the amount of fuel in the tank (U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,964); inverted V-shaped sear bars that go over the burners (U.S. Pat. No. 4,727,853); multipurpose thermometers (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,777,927 and 4,966,125); burner guards for preventing spiders from entering the burners (U.S. Pat. No. 4,829,978); side burner assemblies for use with portable grills (U.S. Pat. No. 4,860,724); ignitor housings for protecting the gas ignitors (U.S. Pat. No. 4,941,817); warming cradles supported on the grill cover (U.S. Pat. No. 5,070,776); steam and wood chip smokers (U.S. Pat. No. 5,167,183); and, rotisserie and skewer assemblies (U.S. Pat. No. 5,245,917). Additional patents and other innovations are also included in WEBER.RTM. grills.
In a continuous effort to improve upon current designs and products, add innovative features, and to ensure a grill's ease of assemblage, the present invention was developed.